Vampire Diaries producers, you are all asshats. Seriously, what the fudge is WRONG with you people! Why must you always screw with Damon? What did he ever do to you, you cruel monsters? Because that's what you are, you know. Monsters. MONSTERS, I SAY!

Did you SEE Damon's face when he was speaking and he compelled her? And he CRIED? Damon Salvatore CRIED! *Creepy intercom voice: Ladies and Gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts as we are now entering The Twilight Zone (Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo)* Damon cried and Delena fans everywhere cried and then I nearly cried. ME! And I DON'T cry. Like, ever. I had a spaz attack 'cause I thought my eyes were leaking, or something.

Rant over.

This Fanfic is my therepy. Deal with the suckiness for (what's left of) my mental health, kay?

If I owned The Vampire Diaries, Damon would be in a much better place right now. Ii wouldn't screw with him… Unlike SOME people, I say it again, YOU MONSTERS! I HOPE KLAUS KILLS YOU IN YOUR SLEEP!

Ahem. On with it, then…

Mute

She was brushing her teeth, because that was just the kind of girl she was now.

Just a few hours ago, a pair of homicidal vampires had tried to barter her off to an even more homicidal mega-vampire, until she was saved in the nick of time by her boyfr- her ex-boyfriend and his only-slightly-less-homicidal brother, she'd gotten home, been healed up by some handy spell her best friend the witch had cooked up and, after all that, she went casually up the stairs to brush her teeth. No biggy, right? Not in her world.

They were getting pretty good at the whole 'in the nick of time' deal, she thinks drily.

Slotting the toothbrush back into its designated cup, she glances at her reflection in the mirror, only to have her eyes flicker away immediately.

She doesn't want to see her face. Because her face, the one she had grown up with, the one smiling in the pictures of her family, the one she had woken up to see staring muzzily back at her for seventeen years, wasn't her face at all. It wasn't Elena Gilbert in the mirror, it was a double of someone else. That's all she was now, all she'd ever been. She wasn't her own person, she was an echo of another. A copy.

A fake.

A nothing.

No, she corrects herself, not a nothing. Every vampire on the planet was out for her blood to free them from the prison of the sun because, to them at least, she was special. That's it, Elena, always look on the bright side! Sure, you're not a real person, but your sacrifice could bring about Apocalypse Via Vampire! Good for you!

She glances down at her arm, expecting to see the crimson bloodied wound she has almost grown used to. But, courtesy of Bonnie, her (someone else's) olive skin is smooth and flawless. She runs her palms over her bicep, finding no trace of injury or blood. Months ago (had it really only been months ago? It felt like another life now), her blood had been just that. Blood. Needed by every mammal, something dull to study in biology, a bitch to get out of your clothes. Days ago, it had risen up in her life far too often than she would've liked. Blood spraying from super-human fights, scarlet slick on vampire's fangs, sharing her own with Stefan to help him. Now, her blood was so much more. It was the key to chaos.

And maybe, just maybe, an escape.

The idea flits innocently through her mind, an errant thought, but it floors Elena like a spear though her body, and she finds she can't shake it off. So what if enough of her blood was spilled tonight, enough that she'd never wake up? Would that be any great loss? It wouldn't be so bad to finally be able to rest (she hadn't really rested in so long), she was the root of the problems the people closest to her were suffering and, sure, they might miss her for a while, but they had each other, they'd get by.

If she died before They got to her, it might just save the human race.

Zoned out in her own little world, Elena leaves the bathroom. She knows she shouldn't be having these thoughts, she knows that, but it was just so damn tempting to just… let go. She muses on the subject of her mental health as she moves, feeling the comfortingly familiar cushioning softness of her carpet in between her toes, and notices for the first time the dark figure that was becoming an all too familiar sight in her bedroom.

Yes, much too familiar, because she barely even flinches at the sight of a vampire in her room.

Damon sits on her window seat, elbows casually propped on his knees and looking for all the world as though he had every right to be there. But there's something in the tension of his shoulders, the way he fiddles with his long fingers that makes him seem almost… Elena would have said he seemed nervous if the word didn't sound so downright silly used in the same sentence as Damon Salvatore.

"Cute PJ's." He says in the cocky tone exclusive only to him, smirking at her short-shorts and tank top. Yup, Elena gave a mental eye-roll, he's just fine, alright.

She glances away from him, suicidal thoughts looking petty and cowardly in the company of Damon, but hovering to the sides stubbornly. She feels a wash of shame and can't bring herself to meet his eyes for a few seconds. "I'm tired, Damon." She is so, so tired.

He looks at her for a moment that seems to stretch forever, before standing gracefully and stepping over to her on silent feet. He holds up his hand, and something silver dangles from it, catching the lamplight and glinting prettily. "I brought you this." He swings her vervain necklace closer to her, smiling somewhat tensely.

"I thought that was gone." She says lamely. He shakes his head, not taking those annoyingly perfect blue eyes off her face. Trying not to think of the trouble he must have gone through trying to pick it up without burning himself, she settles for a breathy "Thank you."

She reaches for the locket, but Damon whisks it easily out of her reach. At first, Elena thinks it's another of his playful games and opens her mouth to quip something about him acting a hundred and sixty years younger than he was, but then she saw that his face was, for once, grave and serious. And that, she realised, was when the first wave of suspicion hit her. "Please give it back…" Her tone is careful, warning.

A flash of something akin to hurt flickered across his face, before he shakes it off and takes another step towards her, invading her personal space in a way that was so Damon of him. "I just have to say something." He says, again, in typical Damon enigmaticallity.

Elena stumbles an automatic step back, her heart picking up pace. "Why do you have to say it with my necklace?" She tries to keep the tremor out of her voice, a hundred scenarios of what he might have her do racing through her mind like some kind of sick slideshow. She knows (without knowing exactly how she knows) that Damon would never physically hurt her, but if she was completely at his mercy, willess… Shivers prickle along the length of her spine. Plus, she had already been compelled once that day and it wasn't, as you can imagine, a very fun experience.

What came out of his mouth next threw all her fears out the metaphorical window and into the metaphorical incinerator. "W-…" Damon Salvatore stuttered. Never, in all the time she had known him had Damon ever had any difficulty with words, and yet here he is, standing before her, prized guards down and stuttering. "Well, because what I'm about to say is… probably the most selfish thing I've ever said in my life."

There is one slow shake of her head. "Damon, don't go there." He couldn't go there. Not now. Not when she's so damn confused about everything. Not when she's so stupidly vulnerable and needing someone to talk her down. Someone like him. Exactly like him. He couldn't go there, because she was too weak to fight right then. He couldn't go there, because she isn't sure she'll be able to say no this time.

"I- I just have to say it once. You just need to hear it." He steps closer to her again, and she steps further back in the dance they know too well. She knows what will happen if she lets him stand too close. She'll be able to smell him; bourbon and leather and something else that was simply Damon, and then her thoughts would fuzz up (like they had a tendency to do when he was around). And that was very, very bad.

But somehow, he ends up much closer than she wants him to be, but in some twisted way, not nearly close enough. He looks down at her, the walls in his eyes completely nonexistent, and Elena feels her heart jump start and hopes to God he didn't hear. He stares at her so intensely (but then, when did Damon ever do anything that wasn't intense?), crystal gaze simmering, that she's sure he's looking for something in her own eyes. Apparently, he finds it.

Oh, God, she thinks, suspended, frozen like a deer in car headlights. There isn't butterflies in her stomach, there's bats. He's actually going to do it this time. Really do it. He can't. I can't. He-

"I love you, Elena." And there it was. Simply said and out in the open. No grand speech, no flair, just Damon acting very un-like the Damon she had come to know. She opens her mouth, but nothing is spoken. There is nothing she could say. "And it's because I love you that… I can't be selfish with you." He seems… resigned. Defeated. But every bit as stubbornly determined as usual, keeping his eyes locked onto hers. "But you can't know this. I don't deserve you." Her lips part a second time, the words to express how much of a self-deprecating jackass he is being, how much he needs to stop talking right now, how very wrong he is about everything he had just said narrowly evading her, leaving her mute once again. "But my brother does."

Right then, Elena was pretty sure her heat stopped for a few seconds.

Damon was giving up on her? The thought brings with it a feeling of icy lead, sliding down her throat and forming a heavy weight in her stomach, its cold fingers seeping through her limbs and leaving her body numb. Only, she doesn't know why.

Damon was backing off, that was a good thing – right? He was going to leave her alone, which was what she wanted all along – wasn't it? She couldn't, mustn't, didn't love Damon Salvatore… did she? Then why did it feel like his soft words, meant to comfort, were punching holes through her chest with each syllable, ripping out her barely-beating heart and squeezing it with barbed wire? Why would she want to fight and shout and make him stop talking because it was hurting her to hear this? If she didn't love him, then why…?

Slowly (so slowly) he leans in. Elena wants to press a pause button, freeze and rewind the universe or, if Godly powers were still of limits to her, at least speak. But then Damon presses his lips to her forehead, the feather light contact sending warm shocks to melt her icy bones, and all that comes from her mouth is the whisper of wind. And then, she knows. She finally knows.

She is in love with Damon Salvatore.

She shouldn't have been. She knows that (by God, did she know that), but she can't find it within herself to care anymore. He was a murderer. He was dangerous. He was broken, and people who get too close are cut by the fractured shards left behind. He was the Other Brother, the bad one.

Stefan was good. And that was fine and dandy, but it was dull. Being with Stefan was like home, curling up with an old book, warm and protected and familiar and safe. She loves him, of course she did, it just isn't enough anymore. If Stefan was home, then Damon was a holiday. Wild and new and spontaneous and exciting, he wasn't safe by any means, everything was an adventure, a thrill ride with him. He would protect her with everything he had to his last breath, but he knew when she needed a hand to help her up the mountain, and when she wanted him to offer it, snatch it back and laugh. He knew what mad her Elena and, good and bad, he loved her anyway. She shouldn't love him back. But she did, and that was just that.

When he gently pulls back, Elena is too blissed out to think about stopping him. She feels warm and loved and slightly dazed. Funny how something so good can spiral into just the opposite in a matter of seconds. Damon tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear delicately, and Elena is about to smile for him, tell him everything she has just realised, apologise for taking so freaking long about it and maybe give him a week of bragging rights about it.

And then it all comes crashing down around her.

"God, I wish you didn't have to forget this," he mutters, running the pad of his thumb over her cheek lightly. Wait. What did he just say? He can't- the locket. Oh God, no. Her treacherous tongue stays dormant for the last time, too shocked to respond to the franticly screaming orders from her brain. It stalls like a car being put straight into accelerate, a hundred words she needed, needed to say clamouring to be the ones that are said and rushing forwards all at once until they were trapped like a huge crowd in a small doorway, leaving mute. Hold on, Damon. One second, I just need one second! Don't- Elena barely has time to register the feeling of the floor dropping from beneath her before "but you do."

There is Damon's eyes.

There is a single tear.

There is the sound of two hearts ripping in synch.

Then there was nothing.

Elena blinks, looking around her empty room. Strangely, it doesn't just feel empty, it feels… hollow. Lonely. So does she.

Huh.

She fingers her trusty vervain locket absentmindedly.

The window is open, curtains whipping in the breeze. She doesn't mind, the cool night air feels good on her skin. For some reason she felt oddly flushed all of a sudden.

She crawls over to the bed, sitting on it but not lying down just yet, though she is so, so tired, all the energy seeming to have been sapped from her body.

She can't escape the feeling that she's forgetting something very important. Not a simple 'did I lock the back door?' kind of feeling, but much heavier and serious, more like a 'did I leave my AK 47 on the bus next to that shifty looking toddler?' kind of forgetfulness.

She plays with her necklace, liking the comforting feel of it twisting it around her fingers. Frowning slightly, she looks down at it as though it held the answers. It has something to do with the locket… She thinks hard, brow furrowed in a very Stefanesque manner, but whenever she feels like she's close to figuring something out, her thoughts scatter like insects before a light.

It feels like an anvil is pressing down on her chest, restricting her breathing and closing up her throat, making speech seem impossible. That sounded oddly like Déjà vu.

Speechless, she thinks and something clicks, but for the life of her she can't remember what it means.

She flops backwards unceremoniously, pulling her cover around herself almost violently through her frustration.

Being mute, she considers before the fog in her mind overtakes her completely and she yawns as something nips at the back of her mind, taunting and teasing, it has something to do with being mute.

Damon, you're an idiot.

An amazing, funny, brilliant, gorgeous idiot, but an idiot non-the-less.

Yeah, she probably wasn't thinking this but it's wishful thinking on my part. LAVE ME ALONE WITH MY DELENA OBSESSION! STOP CRUSHING MY DREAMS! YOU'RE AS BAD AS THE VAMPIRE DIARIES PRODUCERS!

Ahem.

So what'd you think. Decent? Are you just reading it to laugh and give yourself an ego boost? Have you poured bleach into your eyes yet? Did you even make it this far or am I talking to myself? No biggy, I do that a lot anyway. ;)

Reviews are reviews. I'm not going to beg, I do have SOME dignity.

…

*Gets down on knees* PLEEEASE! I NEEDS them, my PRECIOUS! *Creepy Golem snicker and crazy eyes*

…Plz?